A distortion compensating apparatus has an adaptive distortion compensating unit to compensate nonlinear distortion by controlling an input signal of a nonlinear distortion circuit by using an adaptive algorithm so as to reduce an error between a reference signal and a feedback signal from the nonlinear distortion circuit; and an adaptive equalizer connected between the adaptive distortion compensating unit and the nonlinear distortion circuit or provided in front of the adaptive distortion compensating unit. The adaptive equalizer includes a digital filter to form an amplitude characteristic and a phase characteristic of the input signal on the basis of a filter coefficient group that is set to the digital filter; a memory to hold in advance the filter coefficient group; and a control unit to control reading of the filter coefficient group from the memory on the basis of the input signal and the feedback signal.